Erik van Lieshout

Jail (14 min), functions as a fragmentary complement to JANUS. Here, the actor Marien Jongewaard plays alongside the artist as a second protagonist who is asked to perform a role-play as van Lieshout himself. There is no stringent plot to Jail; the film is more like a brainstorming session. Shreds of ideas fly around at high speed and are expanded upon in animated drawings and word sketches - a technique which is characteristic of van Lieshout's film work as a whole and underlines the process-based nature of his artistic practice. One of the stop-motion scenes, for example, shows the artist applying black tape layer for layer onto a newspaper photo of the Dutch crown prince and his wife. But it is not only the motifs that demonstrate van Lieshout's confrontation with his homeland. His subject proper is the current state of political and social crisis in the Netherlands - alongside the not unrelated personal problematic of being an artist.